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Nerds rejoice: The Prairie Code Conference fits into your schedule

The Prairie Code Conference is held at the Iowa Events Center in downtown Des Moines.

A coding conference to attract hobbyists and professionals alike is next week in downtown Des Moines.

The Prairie Code Conference is a two-day event with breakout sessions on anything from Javascript to machine learning, entrepreneurship, app development and mental health. The Prairie Code Conference will start at 8:30 a.m. on both Sept. 28 and 29 inside the Iowa Events Center.

“We have 100 breakout sessions with 50 different speakers,” Co-organizer Jon von Gillern said. “We don’t specialize on any one technology. It’s things that programmers—nerds—would be interested but the meat and potatoes is programming content.”

Each session is between an hour and 75 minutes long.

For longer sessions, an optional half-day workshop is Sept. 27.

“Those have been really popular and probably half of our attendees are doing the workshop and the full conference,” von Gillern said.

Last year, 350 people attended.

von Gillern is the Chief Technical Officer for the tech startup WebCareHealth and one of the organizers for the Iowa Code Camp. Organizers of the Prairie Code Conference also run the Nebraska Code Camp, a one-day workshop on a Saturday.

But von Gillern said they scheduled this conference during the week so coding professionals could make it and avoid conflicts with family activities on the weekend.

“So by having a conference on a Thursday and Friday gives programmers in Des Moines who don’t want to take that Saturday off an opportunity to learn,” he says.

“We saw a need.”

von Gillern says the demand for programmers has increased as Iowa has strengthened its tech community.

“There’s always a lot of recruiters that come to these events because they are trying to make contacts,” he said. “There’s a huge need.”

This is the second Prairie Code Conference but the 10th Amegala conference.